The Hurdle Rate Has Changed: Why America is Embracing Bitcoin

it all comes down to computers communicating the information Super Highway can be a confusing mix of onramps and off-ramps Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold is it still rat poison probably rat poison squared we need to get into the world of okay this is actually foundational technology what the internet of money does is it creates a single Network which can do a microtransaction to a giga transaction the internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government the one thing that's missing but that will soon be developed is a reliable ecash all righty gentlemen welcome back to final settlement today is Wednesday March 12th 2025 five uh not a whole lot to talk about not not really anything happening in the Bitcoin space would you would you guys agree with me today uh my co-host Liam Nelson Michael tanguma you've got Tim Cotman on the show today and Chase pal Mar from Acropolis but uh boys what's uh what's the temperature out there prices is kind of going sideways to down uh but the United States is embracing Bitcoin as a reserve asset what what do we make of this I'm excited for today's podcast I've been looking forward to it given um since we've last chatted or since you know three days ago we have uh or four whatever we have the you know largest uh Sovereign putting you know Bitcoin on their balance sheet we have regulatory climate changing folks on this call were in DC yesterday uh the macro Market is flying around micro strategy I think just announced they're gonna put 21 more billion dollars somehow they're gonna you know buy all the Bitcoins uh so there there's no shortage of fun stuff to talk about yeah yeah that's a a laundry list of events in the past week or so I think uh maybe the logical place to start is the executive order from late last week um kind of old news at this point but uh still pretty important I would say uh in my mind the United States uh is embracing Bitcoin recognizing it as a a strategic Reserve asset they've effectively committed to a few things so uh the setup of a strategic Bitcoin Reserve where that will predominantly uh hold the Bitcoins we already have there's an audit that needs to take place sort of insane that we don't know how many Bitcoins we have uh but that seems to be the case so we got to track those Bitcoins down see what we have the idea is that we will hold those and look to acquire more in budget neutral ways um there's been a ton of talk on on X and elsewhere about the Myriad of ways where you know we could accumulate Bitcoin in in budget neutral ways uh I think saor responded to uh David sack's announcement on Twitter saying I've got a few ways to to accumulate Bitcoin in budget neutral ways um so there's that Playbook there's other sort of facilities or assets that we could leverage um to do that but I guess the you know the other component of this was the digital the digital asset stockpile which I think got initially a little conflated in weeks prior of you know there was talk of a crypto strategic reserve it wasn't really clear what that would look like was there going to be a delineation between Bitcoin and other assets the takeaway is that there is a delineation between Bitcoin and other assets so I thought to me that was one of the more positive things from this announcement generally speaking was the United States government saying Bitcoin is special Bitcoin is different for these reasons and therefore we are not only holding the Bitcoin going to look to acquire more and for all these other assets that we've seized over the years we're going to hold those for now but we might sell them and we're definitely not buying more so that was that was a massive signal to me I think um you know one of the first major signals from this Administration that that they understand Bitcoin is special and different um but the price I think what most people are talking about in in the you know the days and and week uh post this announcement the price has kind of gone sideways to down um now I I would say a lot of that is probably related to broader macro forces Liam Liam I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this I know you you had WR written up some stuff for a newsletter around this but any any thoughts on you know is this just Bitcoin getting caught up in uh risk off sentiment generally speaking around uh you know all the activity around tariffs just general uncertainty I think that's what's what's back in the market is is uncertainty um and a and a general riskof sentiment so any thoughts around that well kind of before touching on price action for a sec just wanted to take a step back and the uh David saaks who is the AI and crypto are is essentially he put out a tweet and said over the past decade the federal government sold approximately 195,000 Bitcoin for proceeds of 366 million if the government had held the Bitcoin it would be worth over 17 billion today that's how much it has cost American taxpayers to not have a long-term strategy and he is implicitly uh understanding the opportunity cost of not holding Bitcoin anybody who dismisses or doesn't or sells Bitcoin automatically realizes how much more they would have had had they just S held on to their Bitcoin over a long time period And I think over a longer time period we we keep on hearing that Bitcoin is the hurdle rate and we're starting to recognize that the government sees that too I thought it was super interesting that they announced budget neutral ways to acquire additional Bitcoin um and some of that was which they David saaks talked about on the all-in podcast was selling other cryptocurrencies in order to buy Bitcoin uh and having Howard lutnick in charge of that is definitely going to accelerate that um but in terms of the price action immediately following the announcement I think expectations were just a little bit too high they thought uh the government was going to go out and immediately acquire Bitcoin themselves in addition um there continues to just be a ton of um you know different macro forces like higher Japanese bond yields uh Rising delinquencies across you know Consumer Credit mortgages um that are giving investors some pause um but in general this is not to be taken away that this is a Monumental shift in terms of the US government uh understanding the opportunity cost of not uh holding Bitcoin long term and uh putting that into an executive order yeah on the pricing side I mean I want to to our buddy Timbo here I guess he updated his his name um and you know if you went on his Twitter you'd have no idea that price uh you would think that we're probably you know north of 200 to $300,000 because I just keep seeing in my feed one million by 2025 and two million by 2026 so Tim curious like what your reaction was uh seeing you know the announcement and and what do you think's coming next well when you walk with uh Michael S or a few blocks along in in DC during a beautiful day and talk to for five you you have nothing to be other than bullish but even before that yeah I just think there's so many um encouraging things happening in the market that um we'll get there it's only March it's still q1 um and just whether we get to 250 or 500 or a million the fact that I can post those things they get a quarter million views and 500 comments and most of the comments are telling me how much of an idiot I am I mean that's interesting to me right not because I think I'm wrong or right but you know it's a lot of people with a lot of opinions a lot of people a lot of time on their hands I think the more that you engage with the community you go to these events like I'm sure we'll get to the you know DC event it's just very encouraging to have now bills both in the house and the Senate six co-sponsors with each one lumus Senator lumus on stage saying that the president's behind this bill to acquire a million Bitcoin over five years you got sailor on stage after that saying we should buy five million I mean I don't know those are not reasons to be bearish so yeah interesting times yeah it's super fascinating to Think Through like there's the things happening in the public eye uh when it comes to diligence and driving to consensus in governance you know from a state level to The Sovereign level and then obviously if individuals work in this industry they're having these conversations as well and it's just this reality um and we talk about this a lot it's why like Bitcoin will generally be driven almost always or for a very long time by the individual just simply because it's a consensus of one so they can always AP in the their whole you know net worth family office very similar uh similar to switch our custody model where these large groups there's just so much and this is part of this podcast is talking about treasuries and what Chas and Acropolis and and uh Tim have been working on on his podcast is that these groups are just like I don't know there's probably not the first in and for some first inning but others that we're talking about they're in second third fourth where they're going through the process but they just aren't ready to start you know from a liquidity perspective making those purchases um so it's going to be very fascinating to see when that all kind of like converges together uh yeah yeah the the other thing that I've been thinking about the past few days is and I think we said something similar sort of like post ETF launch when we had we saw similar price action where after the ETFs went live it was sort of maybe sideways to down before it really started to to pick back up and I think at that time you know we had mentioned on on one of our various pods like you this feels like the you know on a risk adjusted basis like the cheapest Bitcoin ever been given the the trajectory that we foresaw um I think you could say a similar thing now hanging out in the 80s um like I don't think there's ever been a better opportunity to enter enter Bitcoin if you if you're on zero if you have zero allocation um and part of that I think is this sort of ongoing battle in terms of you know people digesting and understanding like what is what is bitcoin and and how should it trade is it a a risk on speculative asset or is it a a risk-off strategic Reserve asset and I think it's the the general perception is like it's one or one or the other right um obviously the sailors of the world are are vouching for it being this Reserve asset corporations who are adopting it and putting it on their balance shet are are also viewing it as such but then there's a whole swath of the market largely more you know short-term oriented you know Traders and hedge funds who are still very much sort of looping it in with other risk assets um and so you've seen uh Equity sell off in the past few weeks and I think that that's you know you know Bitcoin is still being lumped in with that sort of sentiment and riskof sentiment um and so I think what we're going to see play out over the next several months to years is the pendulum swinging to more and more people every day realizing that no this is not uh a tech Equity investment this is a reserve asset um it's really the most riskless thing you could own in your portfolio um and so I think we're just somewhere in between those two sides and and that's kind of what you're seeing play out in the price action and you know for the past week or so those more shortterm short-term oriented folks have have been uh winning that battle in terms of um where the price is headed but think there's also just a digestion period that needs to take place um where you know the US government is coming out and saying it's a it's a reserve asset you can you can bet that every Central Bank around the world every other government is taking note of that and saying well what's our what's our strategy with Bitcoin particularly if they have zero Bitcoin today um because then you know they're somewhere between 100 and 200,000 Bitcoin behind the United States in terms of stacking Bitcoin um and so yeah that's just kind of my takeway around price action yeah just or go ahead Liam no I just uh you know I mean we also just saw a couple hours ago that uh mgx made a fairly large investment in binance that uh that definitely wasn't unrelated to the US making this announcement um their other sister company so mgx just taking a step back is a UAE state run investment fund um mubadala is another one of their funds as well they invested over 400 change billion in Bitcoin ETFs um which came out in Q4 um investment violing but yeah I mean there are other countries that not just you know individual people that are definitely taking no notice and trying to figure out what their Bitcoin and and even crypto strategy is at this time too yeah that's a separate that we should chat about the mgx like um and just in general that that's exactly right like that is Sovereign exposure at the most like 40 chess level in my mind in the sense of you go and you see how there's just natural geopolitical games coming to fruition when it comes to Talent aggregating um from the no uh income tax to other things that are making sovereigns more um friendly for Innovation to go there and so we've seen U from soft Bank to the UAE um different large swats of capital going to try to get exposure into hard and soft Tech in the west and then pull it over and get a lot of the data AI has been this big theme but to your point to go take a$2 billion dollar position in one of the largest exchanges is proxy exposure for Global uh exposure to the sector to crypto to bitcoin because majority of that Bitcoin that capital is probably going to be held on their balance sheet I think by I would imagine bance is very much cash flow positive um but really quickly just to I want to throw something to you guys because it's going to be a little like uh polarizing or like just a little bit different in the sense of um I don't think there's that many people buying Bitcoin like the like there's a few things one is I think Brian's absolutely right absolutely right that very few people hold Bitcoin and the people that hold Bitcoin that are uh most likely to sell it are the people that have very heavy exposure to everything so we're looking at a screen of the total addressable landscape of value roughly 00 trillion and Bitcoin sits at two trillion so of course any selloff in the traditional markets is going to affect this small asset especially if what is generally I think been understood is a lot of the flows from the ETF have been hedge funds trading uh U arbing out the basis trade and this notion of well if they have exposure to these other assets I think it was like reported Nvidia lost a trillion in market cap something like that yeah something a trillion in market cap the past 10 days I was listening to something it was only 700 billion that the bailout was in o08 for 700 billion that's 700 Jerry worlds think how long it takes do Jerry world this is one trillion wiped off of just one stocks market cap and so point being is that um and we see this like anecdotally outside of individuals there are very few institutions in large pockets of capital that are really allocating to this asset at best they're really trying to figure out like what's their game plan for digital assets and what's the difference between Bitcoin and the rest and if that's even remotely true then um there's just not much Capital coming into this space yet outside of that so when liquidity markets get constrained it's natural there would be a selloff and I'd go even a step further it's like joking around this is hyperbolic but like outside of Michael sailor I don't think there's that many people that have actually been buying Bitcoin in size like UAE obviously they've stepped in but it feels like there's been this consistent bid for five years somebody picking up 50,000 at a clip uh portions of BTC but there's not these large you see it in the filings there's not that many corporates there's not many Pension funds I think there's like two or three in the US um and then the ETF has been that that new influx but there's just not this crazy demand because it comes up a lot in group chat chats and with clients about who's selling and I I think it's just the reality is there's not really that many people buying as well yeah that that could be part of it I think the other thing that we've we've referenced in the past is like the ETF inflows are largely retail like I think people conflate those those flows and think oh the institutions are are aping into Bitcoin when the reality is is that it's mostly people in their brokerage accounts that are that are buying through the ETFs or even folks that are are rotating out of spot Bitcoin and and would rather have ETF exposure for various reasons um and so yeah I I don't disagree with anything you said Michael I think um what that does make me believe is that like again you know whether those people are are still learning still educating themselves or just waiting for a better price um it does feel like a coiled spring in the sense that once once those flows do start um I think there there could be some explosiveness to the upside it's just a matter of when um because we know the education is happening we know there's interest um but I think you're right in that in terms of like real size and allocation um you know maybe it's not really here yet Chase I'm curious if if you have any thoughts on on the corporate side in particular because we see headlines every week of new new corporate XYZ that that has a Bitcoin strategy but typically those are you know it's not meaningful size it's not it's not you know at the scale of mstr right yeah right it's really only mstr that seems to be buying in size uh we saw Rumble announced today I think semler bought another chunk today but these you know it's like 12 million here 14 million there and it's not clear how long they can even keep up that pace before they kind of run out of dry powder so yeah I think you know to Michael's point we talk to a lot of companies and you know we're kind of like a light to the moth if you're a business that's interested in a Bitcoin treasury chances are you know we've met you or talk to or talk to somebody within the business and and yeah we're definitely having more convers ations than ever but it's still a big lift within a lot of these businesses to actually get to the allocation so yeah I see the growth happening but I think definitely still in the early stages of the corporate adoption growth yeah and I think like the best mental model to think about it is like for every sailor there's just the majority of that base or that sector that has no exposure interested looking at it for every Ricardo Selenas that's 80% there's the majority that are in the same way and for every one of us you know whatever the like per capita number that we'd look at it's a very similar thing for like we're just in this like bubble that we just assume everyone's going but we know the end State like everyone ends up here because it's just the hardest money so you want to preserve it but um the market coming to that consensus on bitcoin versus crypto and then really the the hard part as we all know going through this is how do you go from just like uh IM inmaterial exposure to material exposure like because that's a big leap right to take physical world value that you have including the dollarss you can actually touch and then putting them into this like thing that you can't touch it's actually kind of a wild thing that I think we forget and so for a corporate to go from 0.1 to percent to what sailor doing is literally like going to another planet uh and so it takes time to get there yeah I think uh Rumble Michael we're going to Mars sorry Liam Michael we're going to Mars okay get on board it it is true we are going to Mars and that's partially why that 1 million and two million get uh they it gets the engagement because everyone feels crazy that they're going to Mars so it's always helpful to have somebody uh let them know that we're still on the right path because it gets real bumpy when you go up that high but uh yeah I mean to your point um I think Rumble came out with filing today and said they bought like 14 million or or something worth of bitcoin for diversification purposes not understanding that like okay the goal is to acquire more Bitcoin it's not like okay if everything in the world goes to and there's like a debt crisis then bit coin becomes valuable it's like no Bitcoin is is mathematically guaranteed to become more valuable over time just because there will be more debasement there's different properties to this asset than everything else out there and it's the best store of value over time and it's just going to take a long time for most Capital allocators to get there yeah yeah that's AB absolutely right I mean you compare it contrast everything we just said with so so Tim and I were were down in DC yesterday for the Bitcoin for America conference uh hosted by Bitcoin policy Institute and um it was hard not to be like insanely bullish at that conference and post it um I'm sure Tim has has some thoughts but just from from my ADV Vantage um you know it was a very high signal event well orchestrated so shout out to BPI for putting on a a concise compact event it was within you know a single morning from sort of 8:00 a.m. to to 1 p.m. with uh sailor doing a presentation and and listen I've heard sailor do what seems like countless presentations at this point but um his one yesterday was was I thought particularly good there was some new slides in there I I found it interesting that he he added a slide um that sort of referenced like stable coins and stable coin growth and so I think it was you know this presentation was very much tailored to politicians and and thinking about Bitcoin as a strategic asset for America but he did add some some color around um you know why this why stable coins I think are going to be a big part of this administration's sort of plan around uh their Embrace of digital assets and and saaks and bessent have have echoed those sentiments as well so I don't know if it was just a nod to to them or or him you know really just talking about stable coins for I think you know one of the first times ever I found that somewhat interesting um but like I said it was it was a very bullish day constructive on all fronts um and it's it you know the excitement and the enthusiasm from the people there was was pretty palpable but uh Tim I don't know if you had any takeaways from the day yeah um I thought it was notable just the people in the room right like we're getting our name tags and I see Anthony and I'm like Anthony you don't come to anything he's like yeah they really said just come to this one you had Max Kaiser and Stacy and I mean they live in El Salvador like so I don't know I was just like is this a bigger deal than I thought um so yeah I thought definitely Good Vibes definitely great orchestration by BPI I mean when you see these videos they almost don't need cut down right you have uh Andrew hones up there like sticking to like a 10-minute presentation like I when I see it on social media I'm like do they cut this down no it's like a 10-minute presentation and like every single presenter just knocked it out of the park so um yeah I thought it was a great event and um yeah I mean not to repeat myself but right the reintroducing the Bitcoin Bill having it in both the house and the Senate having co-sponsors and um a mention of like additional people that they're working on to also add as co-sponsors to those bills so um yeah and private conversations is just kind of like I think they feel like time is of the essence not because of necessarily trying to buy Bitcoin at a lower price but just between now and midterms now is the best time to get momentum and try to get something done so hopefully we continue going in the constructive Direction One Thing that's super positive um you know the BPI guys are great it looked like a fantastic lineup and and curated group um that there's a Bitcoin there's a Bitcoin advocacy group group that's serious um there's a lot of advoc advocacy groups they're doing good work um the reality is and it's just a reality of like the majority of capital that's Expendable from a business perspective is with crypto companies and because they have Big Marketing uh teams and big you know they've raised Capital so advocacy groups have generally had to engage on both sides it's just self-preservation like do you want to live or do you want to die by being you know sticky to bitcoin only like that's the reality of what's happened the past five years and it's not a good or bad thing it's just is what it is but when you have that you naturally have to um sometimes conflate the digital asset space and talk about it I.E Crypt ball and you know all that but it's just super bullish and positive from an education perspective that there's this group that's able to focus solely on bitcoin go very deep there obviously some of the mechanics that we talked about with the executive order and the Strategic Reserve further outline that but that's just how we get to like past this Carnage that I think we all kind of have anxiety knowing that there's still going to be people that lose assets there's still going to be speculation and so that's like a big um takeaway for me is just like it's it's starting to it's starting to just differentiate it's still going to take time um but it's a positive direction versus not having that at all yeah I think one of the most misunderstood aspects of the executive order is how it provides cover to uh the Lumis act the Bitcoin act so like this is Trump getting the Republican party in line and I think sax has been pretty clever about trying to make sure that any anything done on the this front whether Bitcoin or digital assets is bipartisan so that it can be lasting and I think that the EO didn't go so far as to you know mention active purchases because its goal was really just to set up the Bitcoin act to pass in a bip is in way and be that lasting regulation and I think that's what's misunderstood I think that increased the probability of State Bitcoin treasuries and the Bitcoin act and not to mention obviously other nation states getting in the game and and I think the other thing that most bitcoiners didn't appreciate and yeah there's a big you know General market draw down but I think part of the Bitcoin sentiment um draw down as well is this idea of the net neutral budget and how people just simply see that as no new buying and don't understand that somebody like Howard lutnick can do a massive amount of damage with the US government's balance sheet in a net neutral way yeah it's a really good point I think there's there's a number of of tools in the toolbox that uh I personally trust Howard and and Scott bent to be able to to to leverage to acquire Bitcoin in in a budget neutral way um Michael I wanted to I wanted to bring up a chart which we uh we talked about a few weeks ago you have to be very careful in doing this because I'm going to make you a bet after and then you're going to owe me money I haven't actually called it out because uh so we're going to do the first I've been right thus far I think it's been I we probably talked about it back uh back around here and you were calling the top on bitcoin dominance and and we've continued to grind upwards yeah so uh this is what happens when when people like to uh get a little clever and pull this up prematurely um versus you can pick a time frame whether it's end of 2025 you know let's call it middle of 2026 this chart will reverse and whatever we bet here you'll owe me I didn't bring it up because I didn't want you to be like oh I got it I thought you'd be I thought Brian you'd be smarter than that it's it's not over I'm just say I'm I just wanted to update the audience update our listeners on on the status of our our little quarrel here yeah I think ultimately like it it makes complete sense in what what's happened simply because Bitcoin is a safe haven in the crypto sphere so if there's a deleveraging and there's a liquidity flight well people are going to go to the safe asset and then you're going to have large amounts of capital move out of the crypto assets and so this makes sense the idea is that if we are going to have liquidity interest rates go down we're going to have this asset class go from let's call it we're at three trillion today I'm not really sure if it shows it on this chart we end up at the end of the cycle I mean Tim thinks we're going to end up at whatever 20 that's like whatever number that is like 20 plus trillion to Total um but let's just say we end up at 10 trillion from here um Bitcoin sits at well I'm not going to do the math here but like it's 62% now and we end up at 10 trillion bitcoin's going to sit at like less than 50% of that is the is the is a directional bet um so we'll come up with the terms and we'll come back because uh you're going to have I I think what what that necessitates though is a meaningful bid for X Bitcoin assets which like I just don't necessarily see if like the the primary bid that we're going to see over the next 12 months is like corporate and and nation state level buying they're not buying ethereum they're not buying xrp yeah it's the first part of that the second part is we have 247 Global crypto markets and as the price appreciates it's the ultimate barometer for awareness which will have Traders come in and step in and if they make a little money on BTC that's a natural cycle into alts and then people will look at alts because they have the unit bias and they just will go in and they won't understand all of this because this is at the like very edges of nuance and understanding like the market mechanics of where the the liquidity goes yeah I mean I don't I don't disagree with that line of thinking where I think the the difference might be is that you just have to bet you you don't it's just like somebody loses somebody wins money because like that's it's really that uh straightforward so we got to call it out because this is what happens like if you want to bring up charts and and say you go now you gotta pick uh Liam you get to pick the amount of STS and then Brian you get to pick the date that we will look at the dominance and then uh I guess what what is it that like I just said dominance is going to lower right from here and Brian said it's gonna go higher so and we can look back at the so what are we at today it's that like 62 okay is Michael is that a short-term call or long-term do you think that Bitcoin does just eat away at dominance forever oh yeah I mean longterm all the Bitcoin eats everything uh yeah yeah not I'm not crazy just it's just um but we'll come back to that because it's important um to to know who's right and who's wrong uh Chase I wanted to go back to something I Tim I I think you talked to chase a lot so you know this like I you're the mstr bull but I think Chase might literally I think he has an mstr pillow I think his newborn might be named Michael um I think there's some serious things going on there I mean he's literally a CEO of a Bitcoin treasury company with his plans to help Michael sailor actually custody at the right way so there's a lot that chase is writing on uh in the treasury space and so I'm curious Brian earlier said something interesting about uh stables and sailor and I know I've seen it like cursor right you flick through enough Twitter before you mind turns the mush and you see like something about uh um you know becoming a bank and and this notion of stables and I've always been interested in like if you can differentiate by backing know with some BTC and all that like do you think there's anything there you thought about it uh I know you have so I'm kind of leading you but curious like what you think about stables and mstr that's to me um or that's to both of us you go firsta one and Michael two okay yeah I I'll start um sailor has talked about Stables before actually um his thesis is that Bitcoin is not a currency it's digital capital and so whether he actually believes that is one thing versus that is the position he's taking so that he can keep governments from squashing Bitcoin and getting them to believe that there are par paths for both to exist that's another question um I tend to think that he would believe that longterm it does eventually become the medium of exchange as well but I think he just and he's kind of hinted at this before it's basically like pick your battles if you don't have to fight the government then don't fight the government that that makes sense I guess I was more Curious of do you think he gets involved in Stables from an issuer perspective like mstr turns into a bank and that they have uh that that's where that's where I thought you yeah that's where I was going with it oh okay uh I mean they definitely seem to be positioning themselves as the Bitcoin Bank some would argue that even the new logo is like just a middle logo on the way to being strategy Bank um I could see that um you know sailor believes that Capital it's its purpose is to be held and lent out to folks who want to use it to create productive you know Assets in society and he seems to be in the camp that banks are good so long as they stick to just storing and lending out capital in responsible ways and so I think he he wants to be the Bitcoin bank but I also do think that that could be a long way away you got anything for us Timo so on my phone I didn't I I don't see anything on my screen so you probably see Timbo does it say anything else is it like Timbo Slice or it's just Timbo it's Timbo and then there's just a bright orange tie right next to it oh okay that's well it's on brand except for the bow part um yeah everything that chase said it's a continuation of um stable coins can export the US dollar Bitcoins not competing with the US dollar all of those themes definitely um and I think what I've picked up on from you know several conversations is that you know mstr has iterated their way to this point and they'll continue to so I don't think anything's off the table but um there's definitely a Focus right now on just stacking Christine nice yeah one other um one other thing just to note from Sailor presentation yesterday that some folks on on X picked up on and I kind of did a double take when I heard it live um and it was you know a quasi near-term price prediction from Sailor which you know he doesn't he doesn't often do but he brought up the um the chart that shows the largest Assets in the world Bitcoin is currently eighth largest asset in the world and he said you know currently it's eth it'll be the largest asset in the world within the next four to eight months yeah got it Liam did you have anything uh on that because I think the OCC stuff would be relevant given we're talking about Banks um I mean uh I'm interested in that too I just uh sailor has very repeatedly said you never sell your Bitcoin um and so I would be interested in like the mechanics of him actually doing something with a bank just given he has very very repeatedly say he he doesn't really want to do anything uh with his existing Capital so that would need to to be all through new financing which is also a creative to his Bitcoin strategy uh I don't really see that in the near term unless he kind of changes his messaging a bit I guess one last thing I'll add here is he's talked about how because Bitcoin is digital Capital that it can be lent out in any amount to anyone anywhere in the world at a moment's notice and then you know returned back to you so he I think he sees this future of like micro lending at at light speed anywhere in the world yeah I think he's more likely to blend out his Bitcoin in order to get some additional Bitcoin yield on top of it um we we know that there are some some risks associated with that but I know like on safe ad's podcast in the past he's talked about that um it'll be interesting to see how he gets comfortable doing that yep it makes sense and actually um maybe before the OCC stuff we can uh do some some breaking news with uh our buddy Tim announcing coming on as an adviser to early writers um I think Tim has to run at the top of the hour so we can chat a little bit about that I think Tim since we' first started chatting you've seen more and more about Bitcoin as the hurdle rate and more of this uh in the Lexicon and the Zeitgeist understanding the cost of capital there is a cost of capital now and it's not the FED funds rate but it's the hardest asset known to man um so it's exciting to bring you on as an advisor to early writers and what Chase said in referencing micro transaction and banking there's going to be no shortage of businesses that are going to adopt Bitcoin on behalf of their treasury that are going to build net new businesses and you've been establishing a platform with Bitcoin treasuries you're seeing new entrepreneurs existing entrepreneurs looking to break in this space so super pumped to uh get you involved further in what we're building and curious what you if you have anything to share yeah no I'm very excited about the opportunity and is just uh I don't know that i' heard the hurdle let alone a theme until I was introduced to early Riders right the first ever Bitcoin denominated Venture firm and since I started bringing it up in conversations on panels now it's like Matt Cole and VC and like everybody in their brothers like Bitcoin is the hurdle rate I'm like what we started this thing a few months ago as far as like maybe that narrative or I'm just right you drive a red car you see all the red cars I don't know but um yeah no very we're obviously early we don't need to spend a lot of time on that but um private companies public companies um I'm having conversations almost daily now with um either CEOs business owners private companies um that are all working with companies that want to at least understand what's going on and consider first buying Bitcoin for themselves and then considering putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet is obviously easier as a private company and then the public I think we going to be slower than you would think but um not that far away yeah either yeah Chase curious your thoughts here and open up to the group but Chase your closest um to what we're doing as a portfolio company but also talking with different companies and I think that there's like two formats to bitcoin's the hurdle rate there's the discussing it because it's a it's a good like it's a it's a good message right like bitcoin's a hurdle rate you should Benchmark against that but then it's fundamentally different when um you really think about like not only building to that like returning more Bitcoin back to yourself as a business owner or your shareholders Bitcoin not like Bitcoin per share but the actual underline how it affects your business decisions from an efficiency standpoint because I think that's like what's implied in that is okay so bitcoin's your hurdle rate you bring on bitcoin as a capital um as a store value shares go up and then there's this like implied notion and I think it's true or I know it's true that like over time that will be incepted into the mechanics of how the company's built and it'll make it more efficient but from there to that point is more it's it's been said as more theoretical versus what we're talking about is like in practice what we build at onramp how crop is being built how actual companies bring bring the capital on and they they're ultimately looking to deliver Bitcoin back from whether it's early writers back to LPS or uh AC Copus back to early Riders from an investment perspective so curious how you just think about it and how you seen in the market because I think it's kind of conflated of it's a sexy thing to say Bitcoin the hurdle rate is completely different I joke and it's like saying I want a six-pack and then go into the buffet versus like saying I want a sixpack and then you have to do the hard thing and actually have to go to the gym and do the deal and those are like fundamentally different things and it's going to take a while for the market to realize who's just saying it and then who's actually producing the results yeah I guess my thoughts here is that I was uh before I found Bitcoin I was kind of a believer in The Lean Startup methodology and fans kind of a student of startups and a fan of things like Bezos making every new employee you know go find a door and build their own desk and and these types of things to like try to instill cost cost savings and efficiency right out of the gate and you know you've seen the pictures of uh Bezos in front of the Amazon sign which is just like a little Banner that he spray painted and he was proud of that Banner right because it's showing that I I didn't spend a thousand dollars for some graphic banner on my wall this is good enough and I think that what that methodology kind of missed was that it didn't have a true opportunity cost so it's like okay yeah you're not spending too much money to build the business but what what is the actual opportunity cost and I think with Bitcoin as the hurdle rate it inherently lends itself to The Lean Startup methodology um but it also expressly States you know what the opportunity cost is with each incremental dollar and so yeah I I obviously I run my life that way uh before coming to Acropolis and you know tried to run my businesses that way as well but to have a VC partner in early writers that is like expressly giving me the green light to hold 100% of the business's capital in a Bitcoin Treasury and to like weigh every growth decision against that every hiring decision against that it's it's incredibly aligning yeah it's it's a really good point around you know effectively it it moves it away from being something theoretical in terms of like Capital discipline and to to something tangible where exactly um now obviously you know past performance is not indicative future results we can't predict the price of Bitcoin but what we know about it from a monetary property perspective we can have pretty good assurances that it's going to be sound money into the future as it has been for its entire history and so it it gives you this this anchor to tie to to tether to um and so it's not just this theoretical game of well I'm saving money here by you know Bezos not not making the sign it's like well what what are you doing with the money that you saved on that like that's still a question question and so in some sense prior to bitcoin existing that that opportunity cost was always theoretical because you could say I'm going to go invest an XYZ thing it's going to produce XYZ return um and so it moves this it moves it to more of a a tethered reality and the other thing I'll mention is uh VC was a keynote speaker at the event yesterday and his whole speech was on this it was completely about Bitcoin being the hurdle rate and and why that actually uh sort of catalyzes Capital discipline and you know part of his theory too was like in a world where interest rates are no longer zero like you do need to think more critically about um opportunity costs and hurdle rates um and you know to me it kind of it's it's irrelevant what interest rates are in terms of um Bitcoin being the hurdle rate but that was part of his his thesis was like you know we're we're no longer in a in a Zer era so you have to think about this differently I think that's partly true but we're in a Bitcoin era now and so you you have to think about the entire Spectrum differently um because that is the real opportunity cost yeah I think what a lot of people Miss is um it goes back to the conviction that I think we all have in Bitcoin in the sense of if Bitcoin credibly enforces 21 million hard Cap Supply then It ultimately wins his money and if that's true then ultimately Bitcoin being the hurdle rate is a is a derivative of of that meaning that everyone that invests their Capital will be benchmarking it against their own Holdings because it makes zero sense to give up the Bitcoin if you're not going to get more Bitcoin in return whether it's today at today's prices or if bitcoin's nominal um uh purchasing power increases at 3 to 5% on an annualized basis because of GDP growth well then you're going to need that in return and so if that's true then everything else that will be built will be based on that and this goes back to like we have different pieces to put together but one of them is just like well what is investment like in a Bitcoin standard and ultimately it means that more people are saving more people saving means less people are spending frivolously because there's a lot of things that exist in the world today that shouldn't those people now have to go find real jobs that produce value that lowers the cost of production for everything that is like fundamental to society which allows for more saving and then you put that saving back into credible things and it's not to say that capital won't be destroyed because that's just how humans operate but that's the basis of it and anybody that says bitcoin's a hurdle rate like won't tell you that they'll tell you like Bitcoin the hurdle rate because it's going up and I got to do this crazy and like everyone screams about it but there's like a fundamental basis of like this is how Society will run and operate if that is the metric that they need to get returned if they're going to relinquish that underlying asset and then every decision Point past that when you're a business owner has to be the same similar thing to our personal balance sheets it's like well why am I going to spend this unless it's obviously for like lifestyle reasons but businesses are fundamentally different than you know your life yeah no absolutely um and to a certain extent you kind of you kind of have to to live it I think is is part of what you're alluding to of of it's it's easy to talk about it um it's much harder to actually do it and Implement uh you know grow a business on a Bitcoin standard that's when you actually internalize what we mean by Bitcoin is the hurdle rate and until you do that it it's it's nice to say but um it's a very different operating in that mode there's a lot of companies and and Venture funds that have like deployed and burned Capital laid off folks and you think about like if you rais I don't know hundred million dollar and you go and look at the dollar the amount of BTC like this is another piece we have to put together it's like really the future metrics will not be how much dollars you raise it'll be how much BTC you raise and it's actually going to be the least amount of BTC you raise is is the benefit less the more dollars you raise because the more dollars you raise is actually the more BTC you have to out form so raging 100 million bucks the past couple years means you like let's call it 3,000 or whatever number BTC chase you sound EXC you look excited so I'll let you go the second the second part to that will translate to companies because it'll be less amount in the number of people you have and we all know it's going to go back to less employees but it's going to be more of amount of BTC per employee like amount of BTC Revenue per employee um so there's these like fundamental things that are drastically going to change the landscape and that again goes back to the six-pack like you can talk about it but to actually do it is fundamentally different thing and the only way you can do it is actually by like actually doing it like building the businesses in that way because that's the hard part is developing that process yeah I just wanted to basically double tap that in the sense that you said you're not going to be looking at we're not going to be celebrating like oh so and so company raised a $2 million seed round what you're going to do is you're going to say okay well if they had allocated to coin immediately whether they did or not maybe they raised from a early Riders and they actually raised in Bitcoin or what is the amount of Bitcoin that they could have acquired at that start date again Bitcoin is the hurdle rate right because if early riders invests in Acropolis and we have a certain amount of Bitcoin to start with that is the hurdle rate because we need to hurdle above that before we can return Capital to investors so like Bitcoin is the hurdle rate all the way from the micro level to the macro level and for individuals and businesses so it's just uh another way of thinking about Bitcoin is the hurdle rate is you have to return more Capital than the Bitcoin that was allocated to you initially yeah and that's by via Enterprise Value or dividends right because you have like you basically have a call option on the equity value there's a there's a this is like a cosmic angle of all this but um the way I see this all is similar to like when you think about what makes uh Bitcoin work it's because there's a token attributed and the um incentive model across miners nodes and participants are tied to that token and and so like the most efficient uh energy sources are tied to how Bitcoins leverage right because you naturally want that token and so you're going to go there in the same way that the only use case for a blockchain is to manage that token via you know consensus and all what we're talking about here it's very similar to like like Humanity like how we'll all operate is the way societ Society will all like operate at the most efficient scale as once you have the token that has a finite Supply yeah I mean we've never had that right we we were pretty close with gold for thousands of years but even that wasn't wasn't perfect scarcity and so I think that's part of the that's part of the learning that will occur over the next several decades um the appreciation of of absolute scarcity um I think you know the four of us on on this call are in the extreme minority of of even grasping what that that really means and one last part like I think you'll appreciate it I think Liam's heard this and Brian definitely has cuz he was at the dinner we were with a very prominent um venture capitalist in the space and he was really enamored by on rant and I was like you want to know something cooler is like we run the only Bitcoin denominated Venture Fund in the ecosystem he's like tell me more and then so explain you know just like pretty simply like well if me and you start a business and we raise a million dollars or hundred million dollars we'll just build a more efficiently efficient business inherently which means a better business with a million than 100 million and then I was like let's take a step back now let's play it back where we raise a million in USD or a million in BTC now think about how great of a business we run because it's really simple and again nobody can talk you through this unless they've done it but it's like well me and you chase we start a business we raise a million BTC or or dollars we do it in dollars maybe you take that extra higher because 8 to 10 you want to spend some time with the family but if you give up that BTC for the high if you're holding a BTC and you give up that for the higher well now you've lost that purchasing power appreciation versus suck it up figure out the SEO strategy go on and that optimization it's not to say you don't hire but and if you do need a hire then you're ultimately going to find not only the best person you're GNA find the person that aligns with those ethos as well because that they want that token as well so when they come in they're looking for Equity because if you're trying to get more of that token then that asset then they're going to come in and then it aligns at the highest peak who should be as part of your team because they're aligned with that so they're going to be the best performer and get to it it's like a beautiful system and that's truly what like bitcoin's a hurdle rate like me yeah espe especially if you're a Bitcoin only business so you're attracting Bitcoin Talent when they come on board if they're getting Equity they don't want to drain the company's Bitcoin treasury as they come on because it's counterproductive because they want to they want to own points in a business that sits on that treasury for as long as possible so they come in and they're like incredibly willing to work with you on compensation structure because there's an alignment in a way that you just don't see in other businesses that's exactly right and that's how you build the best businesses because you can't build a great Business Without great people and great people want to do great things and like it's the best turistic when it comes to uh just that full alignment across the board there's other anecdotes to share but I know we talked about this a lot but yeah it's a it's super exciting because once you talk to the right people and they get it they're like holy crap they have to be a part of it so if you're ever interested in building on a Bitcoin standard or getting involved we do you should reach out absolutely well anything else uh we wanted to cover Liam was there anything you want to mention around the uh the OC news or or Banks get getting the green light to to enter the space I mean we can we can continue to talk about this all day um you know there are going to be a ton more banks that really want to put Bitcoin and and even stable coins I think Bank of America uh talk about issuing their own stable coin I don't think that they're going to outperform tether um but we'll see um but yeah there they're going to be more and more people that want to hold Bitcoin and and broader crypto on their balance sheet um we'll see how they aim to do it I I think they're going to be very slow to um to move I think they have a lot of compliance boxes they they need to check um but at the end of the day I think they're just going to get a broader audience more comfortable with the asset as a whole and we're going to continue to see adoption tick up just because there there are just realistically a lot of people out there that are want Bitcoin exposure but are too lazy to open up a new account I personally think it's the most bullish I'll let you go Brian but I think it's the most bullish thing for all of this independent of spr everything else just Banks Banks being able to to enter the space and and not having to worry about regulatory overhead or yeah exactly simply because individuals family offices and everyone in between that leverages a bank just wants to deal with their bank for financial access to assets and yeah it's a much it's a much uh it lowers the friction of in like because the alternative right is you got to go find a crypto native firm and vet them and you know figure out how to partner with them or integrate their Solutions and so I think it just it greatly greatly reduces that barrier and those frictions uh only other thing I wanted to mention on on the Stables topic was you know if we didn't have enough signals already that the United States really wants to embrace Stables to to sort of assert or continue to assert uh dollar dominance um Paulo the CEO of tether was at the conference yesterday it's the first time he's ever been to the United States and so I think it's pretty clear like you know he feels comfortable enough with this Administration to come to the United States for the first time so I thought that that was an interesting signal as well well he has his uncle lutnick there so like if he gets in jail just bail him out he'll be good uh yeah I think there's inherent like um or implicit uh like not green light but like it's saying that this thing's not a scammer Ponzi right like the administration being friendly has been anybody in this ecosystem has seen the past eight weeks has literally been like night and day from the interest um from specifically like on the like closer to the regulatory bodies so when you think about raas and has have to deal with the SEC and then from the banks dealing with the OCC and other Federal Regulators this shifting in tone from Administration is just like completely taking the wind out of oh in the stigma that this is a nuclear asset or radioactive asset and all that um and so then once a offers it it's like one part friction but it's honestly in my mind one part like a blessing from their financial institution that this is okay um and I met with one yesterday and it's interesting because it's going to happen in the same way they were like they're super sophisticated for a bank like they've been talking to The Regulators they've been trying to get in for a while five years really sharp guys and we talked about this earlier today Brian like and chase you probably feel this as well there's like a a barbell when it comes to understanding what we're talking about here in multi- institution specifically multi- institution custody if you're kind of like net KN to the space it's like well that that's in inherently like seem safer three institution Safeguard in the asset and then on the other side of that when you're outside you've gone through the fire and you're on the other side and you're what you would think of is sophisticated because you're still involved and you haven't been burned you're like oh wait this is how it all goes right it's that middle crowd that's where you kind of fall into the the Trap of like oh it's okay just single party custody and all the things and this these guys were on the other end of it um they've seen it they've seen the risk all they're thinking about is risk right and they were just so estatic that they had stayed close to this asset for all these years to understand where the traps are to understand what they need to build because they're all about trust like they the second they lose it they lose their whole bank and so it was a great conversation really great but point being is this similar with raas right they're all private businesses they're all looking to attract Capital attract AUM it's going to be land grab it's an insane opportunity from raas to Banks they're very similar kind of cohorts and like they're trying to attract capital and differentiate um but the other side of that the bearish sad part is a lot of these people are caught or have been caught flat footed and they will continue to be because they just thought this was all a Ponzi and they never had to worry about it and and I was telling them at 150 right just like to call it a double from here they're all just going to make a bunch of mistakes because now they're just going to be banging down the door from their shareholders from their clients and that how you end up with all these crazy like Frankenstein setups and that's when you end up with another deleveraging because you're offering yield and all this crap so um it's bullish and bearish at the same time because it's just a steep learning curve but um yeah just wanted to share it's a good point um on the getting caught flat footed like I think you could make a a parallel to you know how now there was obviously other factors but like the what you would think of as sophisticated investment firms and allocators who aped into FTX right because they they felt like they needed to do something in the sort of early Innings of that bull run and so they didn't really do any diligence or if they did it was cursory at best um and so I think you'll see you'll see different flavors of that this time around uh to your point for those late movers who are going to move quickly but likely too quickly to to actually think about it critically yeah this is how this is how you see mic as a standard basically because you get one more cycle and then you get a thing a bunch of things blow up and you get regulatory consumer protection in place because you can't have a single party custodian that's a black box custody it sorry Liam no I was just gonna say the last thing on on the banks being able to custody is like this is going to be a massive Catalyst for corporate adoption of Bitcoin corporates that have been around for hundreds of years have had relationships with their same JP Morgans they've done all their due diligence making sure their processes are correct and they've just been really comfortable with them um so when they start to offer Bitcoin it's going to be a natural relationship rather than trying to build a whole new relationship with a different Financial partner um so I think we're going to see not just individual but also corporate adoption uh maybe even accelerate faster than individual adoption in terms of percentage basis yeah and maybe I would just chime in and kind of second what Michael's stance was that perhaps this is even more bullish than the SBR and the reason I would agree is that Banks being able to custody Bitcoin is the starting you know down the path towards lending and borrowing which means borrowing against your Bitcoin at low enough rates that nobody ever has to sell their Bitcoin again and if the value of Bitcoin is its scarcity well the spr creates demand for Bitcoin but if we can literally you know improve the scarcity aspects of Bitcoin to the point where nobody is ever even selling anymore that's more bullish than nation state adoption yeah you know what that just reminded me of is um anybody that's ever like talked to or dealt with like wealthy people in the space or just in life they don't want to ever catch a falling knif they're happy to see the asset fall and then catch it back on the upswing and I think of coinbase or a digital native firm as their version of catching a falling knife in the larger picture right if it's a family office and Somebody's Worth and personally can be worth 10 million plus family office 10 to you know a billion whatever the number number is they're not thinking about this outside of 3 to 5% if that and so that version of catching a falling knife on a third party custodian that goes to zero it's like aat it's like why would I want to deal put myself in that position but if it's their bank then it's like well this isn't me catching Fallen knife this is like the market has priced in that this is not going away I'm not going to jail for it they're not going to ban it and now I can just get my 5% exposure we all know that's the journey down like f you know mat material exposure but I think that a big embedded component to this is most people aren't like us just trying to like preserve our wealth so we can buy a house and all the things that Millennials have just had to deal with because of the um de basement of currency like they're kind of okay they don't feel it in the same way yeah 100% well up boys before before we jump Ryan we gotta part of this was uh just I wanted to hear kind of like Chase anything you want to share I know there's been an insane amount of uh traction and interest um across the board from companies so would love to just hear from like the multinationals and what they're been interested in um the smaller companies and just like kind of an update if you want to share yeah sure so um we're seeing a lot of interest from folks in the commodity world so whether they're dealing in oil gas minerals royalties on any of those gold so we're really excited about the fact that we're positioned in in Austin Texas as our headquarters because it does seem like that was really smart uh looking back on it based on all the interest we're seeing in the commodity space commodity type businesses they seem to really be uh grocking this asset class and the urgency around acquiring it for their treasuries better than most other businesses and then um we're also you know I I kind of called this when I first came on board but I'm pleasantly surprised to see that it's you know been the case we're seeing a lot of interest in capital markets activity for companies that really do want to either borrow against existing assets buy Bitcoin and then borrow against it you know raise Equity rounds of capital to buy Bitcoin so we are definitely going to be ramping up the capital markets activity over the next six to 12 months we're we're bringing on some really excellent folks to the team to do exactly that and uh yeah what I'm excited about as somebody that's running the business at Acropolis like this is not for to the benefit of our all the clients so much as to the benefit of acropolis is that as we attract AUM into our multi-institution custody setup we can actually then go help grow that AUM through the capital markets activities and actually take transaction fees on that as well so it's a really exciting time at Acropolis for the business and then um yeah we're we're just seeing more and more conversations with higher and higher quality businesses yeah the thing I'm most excited about and curious how you think about it is um just this notion that like the only thing really scarcer obviously time than Bitcoin is really like the human capital that's done the work and that merging of capital markets understanding of Bitcoin and being able and this is like kind of how I think it's all of our thesises about like Wall Street and how they're inevitably not going to make it outside of this because it's just a different asset has to be treated in a different way how you guys can step in to really provide that you know outsourced viin strategy officer to support whether it's from like external coms to internal coms right because you have to drive the consensus all the way to how do you think about a cretive financing or just like literally the most simplest form of like how you educate about custody and where the tradeoffs going to be um so just curious like how that's been going and anything on that lens you want to share yeah and we kind of refer to this all as air cover as a service so one thing that's been really interesting to see is how a single orange pilled executive at the company will kind of set the the consultation with Acropolis he'll bring on either higher ups or other team members that you know he needs to build consensus with on the Bitcoin treasury strategy and the call literally starts with hey this is Acropolis I Acropolis I'm bringing you guys in because I'm the crazy Bitcoin are here and I want them to know that other serious people you know believe in this this strategy and that's actually how a lot of times the conversation starts yeah it's it's so interesting from the micro example of us and our family all the way to corporates and probably even sovereigns right it just requires some other crazy people to help tell the story um to drive validation how you build consensus um Chase where can people uh find out more or who should they reach out to if they want to learn more about Acropolis well definitely go to Acropolis treasury.com and you can book a consultation with us there uh if you want to find me it's @ Chase pal on Twitter um yeah or email me to Chase Acropolis treasury.com happy to speak to any business of any size um whether you're planning on allocating to Bitcoin today or next year uh happy to start building that relationship awesome well it might be a good place to to Marketplace thanks for uh thanks for chatting it's a great one later guys all right thanks later Bo thanks see you thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show if you found the information valuable please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app all the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app before we finish a quick reminder that onr media is for informational and entertainment purposes only and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin Journey we'd love to hear from you visit onramp bitcoin.com cont to schedule a consultation with one of our Private Client advisers